


empire that runs on its own

by spikenard



Category: Raven Cycle - Maggie Stiefvater
Genre: Bad Sex, Internalized Homophobia, M/M, Self-Destruction, Trans Character, canonically foul-mouthed character unexpurgated in fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-21
Updated: 2017-09-21
Packaged: 2019-01-03 20:15:47
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,473
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12154008
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/spikenard/pseuds/spikenard
Summary: “You’re too emotional,” Kavinsky said. “It’s okay. I get it. If you had balls, it’d be different.”





	empire that runs on its own

**Author's Note:**

> this is kind of a nasty fic! deals very heavily with some hashtag ownvoices style gay/trans self-loathing, dubious consent, dysphoria, violence, substance abuse, and unhealthy forms of gender affirmation. slightly more detailed warnings in the endnotes if u need them (pls check if u think u might!) and uh, also notes about… the theology/latin… sorry.

* * *

 

Later, Ronan doesn’t know how it started.

No.

Later, Ronan won’t want to remember how it started.

&&&

Ronan’s phone buzzes at 2:17 am. He can’t sleep and he can’t bear to talk to anyone. Gansey’s awake and working, functionally guarding the door. Noah will be upset if Ronan leaves. So he can’t go out. Declan doesn’t bother texting him anymore. Ronan doesn’t know who else would be trying to reach him.

So he looks. Incoming text from an unknown number.

He opens it.

It’s a photograph from inside a stall in the English building’s third-floor bathroom, block letters: ʀᴏɴᴀɴ ʟʏɴᴄʜ ɪs ᴀ ᴄᴏᴄᴋᴛᴇᴀsᴇ and a phone number. Ronan’s phone number. Ronan recognizes the vandalism, and the handwriting, but that’s well in the past. It means the picture’s months-old, from before the stall was painted clean.

He wonders who’d wait that long to rub this in his face. His phone buzzes.

_im calling for a good time_

He’s not surprised when another text comes in a few seconds later: _so are you up for it or what_ , attached to a grainy photograph. The photograph cuts from waist to thighs on someone whose underwear isn’t where it ought to be. There’s a hand, pale and long-fingered, curled around a dick that looks half-hard and nicely-proportioned. Not that Ronan’s got much to compare it to.

While Ronan’s ignoring the words and investigating the picture, a last text:

_send nudes_

Ronan doesn’t reply. He thinks maybe he should save the picture for later identification, a half-formed impulse to show it to Gansey, to say: _look! a mystery for you to solve!_ and let Gansey loose on whoever this is, at the same time willing Gansey to _see? Someone else_ —

But there’s no fucking point. Gansey wouldn’t get it. And there’s no point in scrubbing this interaction clean enough for Gansey to comprehend it any other way. He’d probably go ballistic. Maybe get the school involved.

Ronan deletes all the texts, one after the other, right down the line.

&&&

A month goes by before the number texts him again. 1:57 am. This time: eleven seconds of dark shaky-cam footage. Cars are briefly visible, pale smears at the edge of the screen, familiar but not identifiable, a two-frame presence.

At six seconds, something at a distance goes up in flames, the whoomph audible even on whatever crappy phone camera filmed this. Jagged laughter is just barely audible before the video cuts off.

Ronan watches it four times in a row. His heart pounds.

He’s sure he’s seen those cars, heard that laugh, before, but he’s not sure where. He watches the video again, and then again, to try and work it out. He can’t tell. He swears.

He deletes the video so he won’t watch it again, and then curses. He meant to save the number; he’s pretty sure it was the same one as the last set of texts he got, but now he can’t be sure.

He can’t sleep. He throws some empty bottles off the roof, and it feels wrong that they break with a tinkling shatter instead of the dull _shunk_ of a fire catching.

When the sky pales, Ronan heads back inside.  

&&&

At St. Agnes that Sunday, Ronan fidgets. He and his brothers are in their usual pew, Ronan on the aisle.

Parrish worked two shifts last night. Ronan pictures him now, sunlight starting to slant over the eaves and onto Adam’s sleeping face.

“Your bodies, all of our bodies,” the Father says, “are God’s, made in his image, a precious gift from the heavenly Father. It is our responsibility to honor that gift and treat our bodies and ourselves with the consideration we would treat all God’s creation.”

Matthew scuffs his feet over the kneeler; sermons don’t hold his interest. Declan’s jaw is firm and his gaze fixed on the pulpit. He kicks Matthew’s shoe off the kneeler. The Father is still talking. The congregation’s attention falls heavy on the Lynch pew.

Ronan bows his head and listens to the sermon. Later, he prays.

&&&

Ronan goes to school. He doesn’t answer his phone, screens Declan’s calls. He doesn’t check his phone at all.

He’s busy. He dreams. He longs for the Barns. He worries about his mother, his brother, his family. He thinks, as fleetingly as he has allowed himself to, about Gansey. About Parrish. He sinks into magic, into not having to hide it, a cocktail of volatile emotions: relief paired with a festering sick guilt.

Ronan never lies, but he doesn’t know what the truth is.

&&&

Ronan does what Gansey tells him to, usually. He doesn’t do that for Adam. He just notices, sometimes. There’s nothing wrong with that. Adam is magical. Adam is interested in girls, general, and girl, specific. Adam is unpredictable.

Ronan does what Gansey tells him to, except when he can’t bear it. Gansey is the most important thing in Ronan’s life, some days. Most days, he’s Ronan’s friend, his boy-king, the seat of Ronan’s most steadfast brand of loyalty. Some days Ronan looks at Gansey bent over a map and remembers his breathless wonder in a dim hayloft and wants to ruin something. But that’s nothing new.

&&&

When Ronan finds out who that number belonged to, he’s disappointed. A letdown. A gun disappearing between acts.

He hasn’t been checking his phone. Not regularly. Then: an ignored photo message of some incoherent brown lines, Joseph fucking Kavinsky dropping a tangle of bracelets on the table.

Later that night: _your move, lynch_.

&&&

So it's not complicated, how it starts. Not really. It was something already. It didn’t come out of nowhere. And it escalates after that start, too: one thing onto another, the whole getting bigger and uglier as it goes.

But what kicks it off: a string of text messages.

_jesus lynch whats a guy gotta do_

Ronan is capable of ignoring that, so he does. _meet u @ the fairgrounds at 11_

And then, at half past 12: _faggot_

Ronan knows he shouldn’t reply.

But that’s when it starts, for Ronan. If he’s going to be honest with himself.

 _takes one_ , he writes, and turns off his phone to go to sleep.

That night, Ronan dreams.

&&&

It’s not like he’s never talked to the guy before. He’s good for booze, always has a hookup. They race. His friends are assholes, but Ronan’s enjoyed catching him alone.

Enjoyed is maybe not the right word. K’s an asshole, too, but then: so is Ronan.

Ronan knows what it’s like to watch someone, and Kavinsky has been watching him. And it turns out they have something in common. The more Ronan thinks about it, the better it seems. Running at night, racing at night, drinking, is a necessity. This is who he is.

&&&

“Hey, hey, Gansey-boy,” Kavinsky says, his voice an arch mockery of Henry Cheng’s, his smile vacant and sharp.

Ronan’s chest burns. He wants to smash Kavinsky’s face in; as soon as the thought filters into his brain, Gansey’s hand is hot against Ronan’s elbow, searing even through his rolled-up sleeves. Gansey never touches skin anymore.

Parrish is lingering against the wall, unwilling to disappear completely but always as invisible as possible, ready to melt away to class before the bell. Looking for any way to avoid a fight.

“Joseph,” Gansey says, paternal and disapproving and so fucking grown-up, “we are at school.”

Ronan doesn’t give a shit about school.

Kavinsky’s gaze slides from Gansey to Ronan. His smile is nasal and coked up. “You’ve got your bitch on a tight leash,” Kavinsky says.

Gansey’s hand tightens on the word _bitch_. Ronan can’t look at him. He doesn’t want Gansey ablaze over this; it’s not Gansey’s to be angry about. Ronan can fight his own battles. Not that this is a battle, of course, but Gansey shouldn’t know that.

“Go,” Ronan says. Gansey stills. Ronan hadn’t been able to tell that Gansey was already moving towards K until his momentum arrests itself. When Ronan darts a glance at him, Gansey’s face has folded back into its usual concern, a paternal dimple between his worried eyebrows. Ronan doesn’t let his gaze linger. He jerks his jaw, instead, to where Parrish has already slipped into class.

“Go,” he says, again. “I’ll catch up.”

“Ronan,” Gansey says, and Ronan is suddenly hyper-aware of how close they’re standing, how this must look to Kavinsky. He shakes his elbow. Gansey lets his hand fall away, but he doesn’t stop talking. “It’s only second period. You haven’t been to class all week.”

“I’ll catch up,” Ronan insists, and it isn’t a lie.

Gansey looks torn, but pulls away. He nods at K over Ronan's shoulder and adjusts the strap of his messenger bag.

The bell shrills. When the last stragglers filter out of the hallway, Ronan finally looks at Kavinsky.

"You ready to blow this joint?" Kavinsky asks around an edged smile.

Ronan uncurls his fists. He exhales. Kavinsky’s grin is still fixed, stupid and toothy. Ronan flexes his fingers.

Kavinsky just tips his head down the empty hallway, and Ronan follows. He doesn’t need to say yes.

&&&

Ronan was going to be back on campus by lunch. He really was. It’s three. The school day is over, now. He doesn’t know where the hours went.

Well, he knows.

“Don’t be a pussy,” Kavinsky purrs, and Ronan flinches despite himself. He is furious, burning with it — at himself; at K; at Gansey, still; at the world — but he’s not going to throw a punch. Gansey’s voice, a million times, a million different phrasings, always the same inflection: _he isn’t worth it_. He can't get it out of his head.

They’re close, sweaty shoulders pressed together, too close to call. Kavinsky smells like body spray and weed; the palm he’s got weighing Ronan down is clammy against the dip of Ronan’s collarbones. His pulse is hammering, and Ronan can’t tell if it’s his own heart or Kavinsky’s. The hard nose of the Mitsubishi is digging heat into the backs of Ronan’s thighs.

Kavinsky's breath is stale with beer. “Yeah?" he says, delighted. "You can be such a fucking cunt, huh,” and his voice is still dripping-sweet, almost tender, almost fond.

He slides his hand up Ronan’s neck to press hard against Ronan’s trachea and then he’s sliding closer, forcing a thigh between Ronan’s. Ronan hopes K’s stupid shorts ride up and he burns his knee on the grill. He doesn’t move his own hands from where they’re fisted at his sides.

Ronan can’t breathe. His chest is constricted and Kavinsky’s choking him, carefully, just curling his fingers and thumb in behind the tendons, leaving a precautionary pocket of air over the front of Ronan’s neck. Ronan’s taller than he is, and broader in the shoulder. He could push the guy away, easy. But Kavinsky’s being almost tender with this, with how he’s forcing the breath out of Ronan. Almost sweet.

Kavinsky’s thigh is all ropy muscle. The synthetic fabric of his shorts rasps against the seam of Ronan’s jeans, and then K’s closer, the knob of his shoulder pressed against Ronan’s through the damp layers of their t-shirts. This close, with no air, K reeks chemical and pungent as bug spray over sweat.

He pulls his hand off Ronan’s neck in a sharp movement that leaves Ronan gasping, and pushes two fingers into Ronan’s open mouth as he tries to shudder for breath. K’s fingernails are sharp. He uncurls fingers over Ronan’s tongue, knuckles pressing against Ronan’s palate, forcing his mouth open. Ronan tries to swallow and gags, hard enough he feels sick. Kavinsky doesn’t move his fingers, forces them deeper against the back of Ronan’s throat.

Ronan’s gags again, and coughs. His eyes are burning. His hands are still curled loose at his sides.

K sags against him, free hand thumbing up under Ronan’s tank top and rubbing into the dip of his hip bone. Ronan’s breath hitches despite the fingers in his mouth and he can feel his throat constrict.

Kavinsky moans, a rumble that shivers through Ronan’s ribcage, and shoves his whole body against Ronan, a jolt that pushes his thigh up between Ronan’s legs hard enough to ache. K’s hard and hot against Ronan’s hip. He shifts, rubbing his thigh against the seam of Ronan’s jeans as he does. Three thrusts.

Ronan’s getting light-headed, trying not to choke. Kavinsky’s panting hard against his ear. Ronan swallows around his fingers, lets some of his weight rest on the plane of Kavinsky’s thigh and settles the rest of his weight more firmly on the hood he's been leaning against. He brings his own hands up to rest lightly just under K’s shoulder blades.

Kavinsky lets out a delighted _fuck!_ , breathes out his cackling laugh. He pulls away, his fingers out of Ronan’s mouth and their chests apart and his thigh out from between Ronan’s, in one knee-buckling instant. Ronan has to catch himself with a bare palm slapped down on the Mitsubishi’s shimmering-hot hood. His skin sears, but he doesn’t move his hand.

K looks the same as he always does. His shutter shades are crooked and he’s hard in his shorts, but it’s not as noticeable as the fine tremor in his hands or the sweat sticking his shirt to his skin everywhere Ronan touched him. His hand is jammed into his pocket right next to his —

“Come and get it, big boy,” Kavinsky says, then, pulling his hand out of his pocket with a dramatic jingle, “if you think you’re hard enough.”

He tosses his keys in the air. Ronan is too slow to catch them. His hand throbs with a stinging burn the second he pulls it off the hood.

&&&

It's not always like that. Of course it's not, with K. But it's always pretty much what Ronan deserves.

&&&

Ronan can turn it off, most of the time. Some of the time, at least. Whatever _it_ is. He knows how to put on a tie and a suit jacket. It’s a relief to do it, honestly. Some part of him thrills at it, at the relief that at least it’s _right_.

Wearing his uniform makes him feel like he’s fucking choking on it, though.

Probably there are people who think he can’t hack it because he’s crazy, not just because he doesn’t give a shit about this place. Because that’s the same thing as not being man enough; the crazy is the same thing as just existing.

Most of the time, Ronan feels like that. Like just by existing he’s ending something. Just by existing he’s proof that everyone is right about him.

&&&

The first and last time they did whatever it was they were doing, it was a week before Ronan’s dad died.

That colors everything about the memory: Ronan’s hair, as short as Niall had let him keep it; the riot of loose curls wisping around Gansey’s face. Ronan’s jeans, ripped over the knee, the muscled line of Gansey’s thigh in his grass-stained Dockers. Ronan’s back arching, constricted and pale and hidden away, obscene and indecent by proxy. Niall’s absence in and of itself, the negative space of him — gone on business and stained by hindsight — the only reason the two of them could hide away in a hayloft without an interruption every half hour like clockwork, to ensure Gansey was keeping his hands to himself.

It wasn’t Gansey’s hands anyone should be worried about; Ronan had to shove them up his shirt himself.

Ronan was busy pretending it didn’t mean anything, like he’d done this before. There was no point in acting casual — it was stupid, really, neither of them had any experience and they both knew it — but it was the only thing keeping Ronan in check.

So Ronan was hiding his burning face, doing his best to leave a mark that’d be visible around Gansey’s polo collar. Gansey rubbed cautious thumbs over Ronan’s nipples, his breath catching in his throat.

“Ronan,” Gansey said, and it was like the first time anyone had called him that, that same elastic pleasure of recognition. Ronan bit down on Gansey’s neck hard enough to leave indentations in his skin. Gansey’s fingers twitched. One of his thumbnails dug into Ronan’s nipple and Ronan bit back a moan.

“Alright?” Gansey asked. Ronan didn’t want to answer, so he shushed him instead.

And then “Ronan,” again, but quieter. Ronan licked over the teeth marks, and then Gansey rocked his thigh up hard between Ronan’s legs, left him gasping. Ronan shushed him again, even though Gansey hadn’t said anything. Just to be safe.

Gansey rocked his hips, once and twice and then in an unsteady rhythm, and Ronan gave up and bent his mouth to Gansey’s.

After that they couldn’t do anything but kiss and kiss, open-mouthed, sharing air.

“What should I do,” Gansey whispered, careful to be quiet. His broad palms were butterfly-spread, high over Ronan’s ribs, his fingers tucked into the tight spandex of Ronan’s top, trying to hold it up. “I want to do what you like,” he whispered.

Ronan wanted Gansey to shut up, couldn’t think about Gansey’s consideration, but Gansey was still talking: “I don’t want to do it wrong for you —”

But Gansey was hard against Ronan’s hip and his thigh was warm and solid between Ronan’s legs, so Ronan just shushed him and kissed him and rolled his hips down and then Gansey was moving against him again, and neither of them could concentrate on anything else.

They were panting into each others’ open mouths, and finally Gansey managed to talk again: “Ronan, stop, I’m going to — do you want me to —”

Gansey’s thumbs were back over his nipples, petting at them. Ronan hissed and pulled away — Gansey’s hands fluttered off him like anxious moths, and Ronan could see him trying to compose a screed of apology. To cut him off, Ronan pulled off his own shirt, and then his compression top.

 _You trust Gansey_ , he reminded himself.

Gansey stared. “Oh,” he said, softly, reaching up to run a hand from Ronan’s hip up his back.

And then: “Oh,” again, wondering, like Ronan was an artifact, a fine find, something delicate and lovely to be labeled and tucked away into archival storage.

Ronan hated it. He shifted his hips and watched Gansey’s throat work. Gansey swept his clammy palm down Ronan’s side.

Ronan cleared his throat to speak, and set his thumb over Gansey’s parted lips. Gansey’s tongue flickered, like it always did when he was nervous, and then again, more cautiously and intentionally, around the pad of Ronan’s thumb.

Ronan couldn’t find a single thought in his whole godforsaken brain. He tried to talk anyway.

His voice rasped instead of squeaking. A relief. “Quit staring at me like that,” he’d said. “And you don’t have to be so fucking gentle. M’not —”

But he couldn’t end the sentence.

“Of course you’re not,” Gansey had said, his eyes still wide and wondering, “I’ve just never done this with, with a _boy_ , God, _Ronan_ ,” and then he’d slid his hand into Ronan’s fly and his mouth over Ronan’s chest and Ronan had stopped thinking.

He didn’t get off, but it hadn’t been for Gansey’s lack of trying.

After, they hadn’t been able to talk to each other for the rest of the afternoon, not even when they’d done their best to clean up and pulled their clothes back on and slunk back into the house to eat summer soup in the kitchen under Aurora’s watchful eye.

Gansey’s shy ankle pressed against Ronan’s under the table. Ronan’s bra was on inside out and a bite-bruise bloomed against Gansey’s golden skin, under his collar. Matthew was cheerful and chattering across the table.

Ronan wanted to do it again. He wanted to teach Gansey how to do it right next time.

Eleven days later, Niall died.

&&&

In church, Ronan wonders what Declan is praying for. _The wisdom to know the difference_ , probably. A prayer off a pamphlet.

Ronan bows his head and prays for himself. _Oh almighty God my Eternal father please God make me whole._

Declan doesn’t know what to do with him. He’s waiting for Ronan to put himself into the ground, and Ronan knows it. Ronan doesn’t want to give him the satisfaction, but that’s still never enough to stop himself.

Ronan spent the week watching Adam’s straight neck in class, too hormonal and frustrated to pay even cursory attention to their teachers. Ronan let himself study the quick movements of Adam’s fine hands as he took notes, instead.

He didn’t let himself think about those hands in any more detail, any other context, and he didn’t let himself wonder if Adam thinks about him the same way Declan does, or the way Gansey seems to now. At least Ronan can be sure that he is not, to Adam, any kind of obligation. But perhaps: an irritation. A brother he doesn’t know or care what to do with, who’ll run wild until he runs out.

It’s likely, Ronan thinks. Parrish is an overworked trailer park Republican who doesn’t have time for any number of things, probably including, well. Ronan.

That probably means all of him, the booze and the cars and the fighting right along with the _crossdressing_ or the _transsexuality_ or whatever the fuck it’s called. Nevermind the _queerness_ , the way Ronan wants boys and the way Ronan wants boys to want him. That’s a different fucking issue, and it always has been.

&&&

Sunday night: Ronan is lying on his back on the floor, aching, carefully ripping the crumpled roof off of one of Gansey’s ruined models. Gansey is showering; when he finally drags his ass back out, Ronan’s going to demand to know what building it’s supposed to be. He thumbs through the pile of fake IDs, morbidly: perfect copies of themselves. Piles on piles of perfect forgeries: Ronan N Lynch, birthdate 1994, gender marker F.

It's fucking incredible work.

Noah keeps floating from the bathroom door to a crouch at Ronan’s feet, occasionally poking his fingers at Ronan’s ankles and calves and the back of his knees. Ronan won’t ever let Noah touch his back or stomach, when they get like this. Cold doesn’t fix that ache, but Noah likes to help.

It’s almost calm.

The light shifts. Ronan looks up. The shower is still going.

He almost recognizes the shape of the Mitsubishi’s headlights through Monmouth’s many-paned windows, throwing pale shadows against the main room’s far wall. He can recognize that engine through his feet, for sure, through the skin of his back pressed against the floor, even though he can’t hear it. He knows exactly what it is. He’d know it anywhere.

The lights go straight through Noah, pinning him in place, small and rumpled and unhappy. Ronan’s chest pangs; Kavinsky doesn’t belong here. Gansey is still simmeringly unhappy about the destruction of his town, the invasion of privacy. As well he should be, Ronan mentally adds, uneasy. Ronan’s got no reason to think it wasn’t K.

Ronan lopes down the stairs and out into the lot before Gansey can get out of the shower and tell Ronan to stay. Or, worse, go down into the lot and handle Kavinsky himself.

&&&

Ronan slides into the passenger seat. He doesn’t bother buckling his seatbelt, leaves it thunking dully between the seat and the side of the car as K executes a crab-legged five-point turn at speed, the Mitsu rocking back and forth unsteadily. Ronan wonders if K is safe to drive. 

A bottle of pills arcs across the car and into his lap, where it lands with a rattle. It’s unlabeled and the pills are plain white; Ronan doesn’t even know why he bothers to check anymore. He swallows one dry.

“Take two,” Kavinsky says, “or it won’t work right.”

Ronan takes another pill and splits it in half against the dashboard. He takes half and holds the rest out to K.

Kavinsky rolls his eyes and takes the half pill. “I’m fucking driving, man,” he complains, but he still swallows it down.

By the time they’ve pulled out to the dreaming fields, Ronan doesn’t feel anything.

“What was in those,” he says, as if it doesn’t matter. Kavinsky cackles, like Ronan knew he would.

“My hopes and dreams, motherfucker,” Kavinsky says, with gleeful malice, and laughs again, just to make sure Ronan got the joke.

“I’m fucking saying,” Ronan says, “I don’t feel anything. They’re duds.”

“They’re painkillers,” Kavinsky says, and with faint surprise Ronan realizes that he’s _not_ in pain anymore. No aches anywhere. Not his split-open raw knuckles, not the cramping muscles around his navel, not the huge fucking bruise K left him after last time, the one that still feels like his rib’s about to pop whenever he has his undershirt on. None of it hurts. His whole body’s pleasantly numb.

Kavinsky says, “I’m not here to deal with your PMS,” and gets out of the car.

He leans down, peers into the passenger side window. “C’mere,” he says, and gets something out of the trunk before Ronan manages to unlock the door. By the time he’s out of the car, Ronan’s seething.

Kavinsky’s got blankets spread out on the ground in front of the car, a thick lumpy duvet and then some fleece. One corner of the set-up is held down by a wicker basket; the others are held down by bricks.

Ronan tries to let his masterful disdain show on his face. “What the fuck is _this_ ,” he snaps.

“We’re having a picnic,” Kavinsky says, eyebrows waggling behind his shutter shades, and opens the basket.

&&&

The car’s headlights are still on. K’d kill his battery like that if his car fucking had one. Ronan can see that the only things in the baskets are darkly clinking bottles and small yellow pills in little plastic baggies. They look like candy.

Ronan flings himself cross-legged onto the ground next to Kavinsky, and opens a bottle of whatever. Their knees aren’t quite touching.

Ronan downs half the bottle in one go. It’s slick and oily, whatever it is, and leaves a peat-bog sort of aftertaste in his mouth.

Kavinsky opens the bag of pills he’d pulled from the basket. He shakes half a dozen candy-yellow pills into his palm before tipping them into his head. The gesture is oddly innocent. Like Matthew on Halloween.

Kavinsky bites down on the pills instead of swallowing. It makes a noise like the time he and Noah froze Dick's fish oil tablets. Gross. There's fluid on K's teeth when he grabs for the bottle, yellow and viscous. Ronan doesn't let him have the bottle, shifts it away. He's not ready to hand it over.

“Your pills are still busted,” Ronan says, finally wiping his mouth.

“Nah,” K says. “They’re not.”

He’s sprawled out on the blankets on the ground like he thinks he’s a model, and not a scrawny cokehead with a face like a stoned greyhound. Like he thinks he’s tough shit.

He shoves his floppy undercut out of his face with his white shades. They cast shadowy bars across his forehead, his eyebrows, the sunken sockets of his eyes. Kavinsky tilts his head back, to look up at Ronan above him.

Ronan hands the bottle down and watches the line of K’s neck bob as he drinks.

When the bottle’s empty, Kavinsky exhales and Ronan’s stomach trembles. A line of heat shoots into his fingertips. He wants to touch K’s wet mouth, but Kavinsky wipes it clean himself: the back of his wrist over the tendons of his hand to the knuckle, dragging over his lips.

Kavinsky sits up with a movement that’s all abs — Ronan wants to rip his tank top up, he wants to _see_ — and then heaves the bottle into the night, overhand. It exits their puddle of light and sails into the glittering night. Far away, something shatters with Kavinsky’s laugh, almost joyous, almost happy.

Ronan’s skin, his muscles, are still numb but his nerves are electrified. He wants to break something. He feels too big for his skin, he wants —

“So does your pussy still hurt or can we get the fuck on with it?” K says.

Ronan’s stomach turns over like a car engine. His mouth is still watering but, now, unpleasantly.  

He spits, and doesn’t bother to aim it off the blankets. It’s not like Kavinsky is gonna give a shit.

“I feel like I’m at the dentist all over,” Ronan says. “Not really putting me in the mood.”

“What _mood_ ,” Kavinsky says, “should I be putting you in. Exactly.”

His shades have slipped back down onto his face and his tone is unreadable.

Ronan looks at Kavinsky. His round lips, his lank hair, his prominent collarbones, jutting sternum. Shirt cut so low Ronan can practically see his nipples.

“Why’d you bring me here,” Ronan says, because he doesn’t lie, and he doesn’t want to answer Kavinsky’s question. He wants to kiss him. He wants to fuck him up.

Kavinsky sits upright, his vague sprawl sheared into a sharp line of attention, laser focused.

“Can’t fuck you when you’re bleeding,” Kavinsky says.

 _Liar_ , Ronan wants to say, but he’s not sure if it’d come out disgusted or — awful, _soppy_. That’s not what this is.

He says it anyway: “Liar.”

Kavinsky grins, sharp. Ronan feels exposed.

He leans across K to dig another bottle out of the basket. The cap twists off in his sweaty palms.

“I’m not bleeding anymore,” Ronan adds, after he drinks. “Jackass.”

“Anywhere?” Kavinsky asks, sarcastic enough that Ronan wants to choke him on it.

“No,” Ronan snaps. “Not anywhere. No thanks to you.”

Kavinsky’s smile looks different, after that. It almost looks genuine.

&&&

They sit there, silently, getting wasted instead of wasting each other.

It’s weird.

Ronan’s silence is sullen, initially. Kavinsky hauls his arm back and lets it fly; Ronan flinches a little as K’s hand flies past his face.

Glass shatters. Kavinsky drains a second bottle and hands it to Ronan. Ronan throws it, clumsy with painkillers and sitting awkwardly. It still shatters.

Kavinsky doesn’t hit him.

They drink. Ronan tries one of the yellow pills, to no effect, and spits the gunk it was filled with off the side of the blankets. They drain more bottles and throw them.

It’s late. Moths are flocking to the headlights. Kavinsky smashes a bottle against his car’s hood to kill one. The bottle shatters behind Ronan, and they can’t stop laughing about it, overpowering. Ronan’s not sure he’s ever laughed around K before. Maybe the pill's working after all.

“Shit,” K says, once they can stop laughing. “Sit still.”

So Ronan does. Kavinsky nudges him so Ronan’s whole body is twisted away from him, and squints into the headlights, trying to see. He does something to Ronan's back.

Ronan can’t tell what. Everything is still deadened, but he can tell Kavinsky’s hands are on his back, on his tattoo. Ronan swallows hard and doesn’t move.

Something clinks. Ronan looks down. There’s a growing pile of glass shards next to them on the blanket. Most of them have at least one dark wet edge. Kavinsky pulls Ronan’s shirt off and shows it to him. The back’s tattered and bloodstained.

Ronan tries to sit up and puts his hand down to steady himself. “The fuck are you doing,” K says, voice neutral. Ronan looks down: his hand is in the pile of shards. He can barely feel it.

Ronan rocks upright and pulls his hand away, inspects it. Most of the glass comes off when he just shakes his hand a little, and the rest is easy to pull out one-handed. Kavinsky lingers over Ronan’s back for a second. More shards join the pile, intermittently, and then they stop coming.

He runs his hand over Ronan’s back. Ronan feels it like it’s muffled through a winter coat: his palm, flat and hard, Kavinsky’s fingers snapping the band of his undershirt.

Then he shoves Ronan’s shoulder, and then they’re face to face. Ronan pulls a shard of glass out of Kavinsky’s arm, when he spots it. K swears, low and hissing. Ronan can’t read his expression.

Kavinsky just sits, silent, for a moment, and then he leans in and kisses Ronan.

Ronan kisses back. Kavinsky’s hands are tight over his ribcage, holding him awkwardly half-sitting. Ronan can feel the sensation, just barely. Kavinsky’s hands, his mouth. His hand is curled around the nape of Kavinsky’s neck. He bites Kavinsky’s mouth and K moans.

Ronan falls backwards. Kavinsky follows him down. Glass crunches, somewhere.

Ronan’s hand hovers over the hem of his own tank top. His rib fucking hurts, finally, the pills worn away; Ronan is genuinely concerned it’s broken. He’s probably still bleeding.

K sets his fingers against Ronan’s sternum, his palm curling down over the broken-rib bruise, and shoves.

“Leave that on,” he says as Ronan’s back thumps against the ground, a layer of fabric left between his tattoo and the lax blankets. His voice is almost gentle. “No one wants to see that shit.”

Kavinsky sinks down between Ronan’s spread thighs, and Ronan looks over his shoulder, up at the sky. The headlights are too bright for him to be able to see the stars.

&&&

That night, Ronan limps back into Monmouth and finds Gansey asleep on the floor, mouth parted and his glasses still on. Noah sits next to Gansey, gaze not so much vacant as absent. Ronan drops a blanket on top of Gansey in a rumpled heap and then goes to the bathroom to rinse the blood off.

Noah is gone when he comes out. Ronan isn’t surprised. He walks across Monmouth, pulling his clothes off as he goes. Now that he knows about the dreaming, Gansey won’t ask him why his shirt is soaked with blood. Ronan falls into bed naked and defenseless for the first time in years.

That night, Ronan dreams.

&&&

He opens his eyes in a dead field. Everything is brown and prickly. It is three in the afternoon and the sun is beating down like a week-old bruise.

Far-off, Gansey calls for him. Ronan is tethered. Ronan is burning and pacing, a junkyard dog on a stake.

Gansey calls for him. The shackles pinioning Ronan are metal and he can hear the sizzle and stink where they’re searing into his flesh.

Gansey is calling for him. Ronan wants to go, or is paralyzed, or is being pulled towards Gansey, but he is moving and then he hits the end of his rope and can’t any further.

Gansey isn’t calling anymore, and Ronan goes wild: his mind buzzes, a howling wind of teeth and beating wings rises at his back to swirl around and past him. It’s going to Gansey, and leading the way, if he could follow it.

Sweat rolls down his back. He’s naked and beestung.

Ronan tears and tears at the chains holding him back, but the manacles are too hot to touch, the links turn to air, to dust, to smoke whenever he paws at them. He snarls. He’s on his hands and knees and can’t move forward.

Someone is keeping him here. Someone is holding the other end of the chain.

Gansey needs him.

He bends his fingers down to touch his fingertips to the metal over his wrists, to try and peel them over his hands.

He prays. _Ego autem sum vermis et non homo._ The words are familiar, well-worn. He mouths them out loud and the prayer drips out word by word to puddle in the dirt between his hands. The words are pale and wiggling things that wither in the sunlight.

 _Eripiat eum, salvum faciat eum, quod,_ fuck, no, _quoniam eum vult_ , Ronan continues.

The manacles stick to his fingertips. Ronan screams, and the manacles dissolve. There are smoking holes hacked out of his wrists. He can see through them. He looks over his shoulder. His tattoo is a seething mass, gulping and wet-black. There are holes the size of golf balls in his feet.

He tries to stand anyway. He’s never known pain like this before. His arms won’t brace him. He stands anyway. He can hardly stand. He stands anyway.

Ronan trembles. Gansey needs him. Gansey is going to die.

He inhales, and tries to take a step. A band of iron slams into his neck, and he staggers. He puts his hand down on the white-hot hood of a Mitsubishi. The pain is cauterizing. He’s collared.

Ronan starts to bleed. Sluggishly from his hands, his feet. Something wet and sticky trickles down his thigh. Blood bubbles from between his lips, his prayers stillborn white worms caught behind his teeth.

He knows who’s holding the leash. He doesn’t have to look up. There’s another harsh jerk against the band around his throat. A hyaenid cackle.

Kavinsky has a chain wrapped around his fist. Not the heavy iron manacles Ronan couldn’t touch: a silver necklace, sparkling and delicate. As he steps closer he winds it around his fist, length over length. The free end of the chain dangles at Kavinsky’s wrist: a clasp, the kind Ronan’s mother taught him to do up one-handed.

 _Eli, Eli,_ Kavinsky says, nasal and Jersey, _Of course you’re forsaken._

Ronan can’t move away. Gansey is dying, he knows with sick certainty, Gansey is dying and Ronan is standing here.

Kavinsky’s fist is ringed with thirty silver coils of chain. Ronan will never have time to unwind it. Instead, Kavinsky touches the butterfly clasp to the thin skin over Ronan’s ribs and the rounded metal cuts like a blade. Blood spills down Ronan’s side.  

Kavinsky’s other hand swipes up the inside of Ronan’s thigh and comes away red. _Sanguis ventris Christi_ , he says, his accent rendering the name mocking and sacrilegious, a stripper’s call-sign.

He presses his lips against Ronan’s cheek. He puts his bloody fingertips against Ronan’s lips. _The blood of the womb of Christ_ , he says, or maybe, _The blood of the wounds of Christ._ And then: _They have numbered all your bones_.

Ronan opens his mouth.

&&&

He wakes up with blistered welts of stigmata, spitting up maggots. He has to vomit three times before his stomach is empty.

Noah’s hands are cool against Ronan’s forehead and against his clammy neck. Ronan opens his eyes, but Noah is just faint hands and a whispering voice.

It says, “It’s not my job to tell other people’s secrets.”

&&&

Ronan flushes away the evidence of his nightmares, and peels his blisters up with the edge of a knife to wash out the welts. He scrubs his wrists and feet under cold water and then wraps his leather bands back on. He leaves Monmouth, and then doesn’t sleep for thirty hours before he loses track of how long he’s been awake.

He doesn’t know exactly what he’s been doing. A lot of things.

He doesn’t go to school. He doesn’t know if at this point he’s missed one day or two. The passage of time blurs into a hangover.

The world feels like a dream. Not one of Ronan’s dreams; the way other people mean it.

Ronan doesn't sleep. He doesn’t dream.

&&&

Some time later: Ronan’s on his knees in the back seat, hollow-stomached and hollow-veined. He hasn’t eaten; he didn’t eat last time he was awake, and then he slept, and it hasn’t been worth it since then.

He can’t feel his heartbeat except as a dull thudding against his temples and he doesn’t remember what he’s taken. He doesn’t know how long it’s been. He knows he washed pills down with liquor K dreamt, that kept burning even after he swallowed, that went straight to his head.

K stuck fingers in him, didn’t touch his ... Ronan doesn’t know what to call it, doesn’t even like thinking about it. He didn’t touch him there, not a tentative shallow probe or a careful exploratory attempt at working his clit. Just straight for his asshole, like he knew what he was doing. Ronan wonders who else K’s fucked like this.

Ronan didn’t know what to expect. He’s never even touched himself like this before. He doesn’t do that. It feels wrong, and it hurts. Ronan doesn’t want it to stop.

K wasn’t awful just to be awful, like he is when they fight, which made it worse. He used lube. He — fingers, one at first, and then more lube, too cold and slimy. And then three fingers right away, thick and stiff and deep inside him.

It's fucking nasty, it's gross as hell. Ronan wonders again and again what Kavinsky was touching, inside him, while Kavinsky is forcing him open, spreading his fingers wide inside and trying to pull them out like that.

He can feel K’s dick, or thinks he can — he can feel K pressed against him, leaning against the seat back and Ronan’s ass and hip, hot against the skin there. His hipbones or his dick or a fucking gun, Ronan doesn’t know and can’t tell tell and doesn’t give a shit, but at least it’s hard and happy to see him.

No one has ever touched Ronan’s bare skin like this. Not just where Kavinsky is pressed inside him, but touched him at all: his ass and his upper thighs, his scraped up hips.

Ronan can’t tell how long Kavinsky takes for prep, but as soon as he pushes in it’s obvious that it hasn’t been long enough. Kavinsky feels fat and huge in him, and Ronan feels like he’s got a cramp. Like he didn’t stretch a muscle before a workout and now it’s overextended. It _hurts_.

If Kavinsky had spent even a second less on Ronan’s asshole it’d probably skin his dick, Ronan thinks, vague and dizzy and venomous.

They don’t really fit into the car like this; the seat’s not big enough. The back window is open and Ronan’s got his arm braced against the frame, his forehead grinding his bracelets against the sores on his wrists.

He can barely move. His knees are stuck to the seat. Kavinsky’s behind him, the back door on his side of the car kicked open where they’re parked, one knee on the seat bracketing Ronan’s and his other foot awkwardly half-under the passenger seat, tip-tilt braced against the back of the seat.

Ronan’s taller than him — by a lot, really, K’s shorter than Gansey, even — but K’s still awkwardly hunched forward, knocking his skull against the roof of the car. His jackoff stupid hat fell off when he fucked the blunt head of his dick into Ronan, and it’s still somewhere on the floor.

Finally he bends over Ronan’s back, braces his hand against the window frame right next to Ronan’s elbow, where he’s got his face pillowed. Ronan bites down on one of his leather bracelets and doesn’t kiss Kavinsky’s hand.

“Bitch,” K pants, his breath wet against Ronan’s cheek. He licks into Ronan’s ear with his whole tongue, dirty and disgusting, before biting down on the shell, sucking at Ronan’s earlobe. He’s loud, and very close. “Fucking — ah, take it, _bitch_ , you’re tight as hell, I can barely _move_ —”

Ronan can hear himself moaning, high-pitched and mortifying. His eyes water and burn, and Ronan’s not sure if it’s from the sex or from his broken nose. He’s still bleeding everywhere. He licks blood off his lip and the leather bands pressed into his face and squeezes his eyes shut a little harder, tries to pretend he’s not crying.

“Should you—” Ronan says, his voice choked, and then cuts off. He doesn’t know what he was about to suggest. Ask for. More lube, maybe. Kavinsky just shoves his hips forward and Ronan feels the car move under and around him and he can feel Kavinsky’s dick in his _teeth_. He pants, mouth open, instead, as Kavinsky pulls his dick out. Slow. Almost gentle.

“You’re fucking —” and K moves in again, a hard thrust that knocks Ronan’s arm out of the car to dangle from the elbow, hand limp against the door. Ronan’s forehead bangs into the half-inch of window that never got rolled all the way down. His bloody nose is dripping onto the Mitsu’s sticky seats.

Kavinsky touches Ronan’s cheek, under the corner of his open mouth. Ronan chokes on a moan.

K makes an approving noise, and says, “ _Drooling_ for it, _jee-_ sus —” and then he hacks and spits phlegm. It slides down Ronan’s cheekbone towards his bloody nose. It stings.

“Yeah,” K breathes when Ronan flinches, and then Ronan lunges forward and fastens his mouth to Kavinsky’s wrist and sinks his teeth into the jut of bone, the soft meat of K’s thumb. Kavinsky doesn’t flinch away.

“Yeah,” Kavinsky says again, this time a moan.

Kavinsky fucks into him like that. Every thrust burns, fucking aches, and Ronan never wants it to stop. He tastes copper and runs his tongue against the back of his teeth, still stuck fast to Kavinsky’s hand.

He’s got no idea how long it goes on for. Maybe five minutes, maybe ten, the seconds stretching and dripping past Ronan’s eyes like the spit and sweat sliding down his cheek. Maybe longer.

Ronan’s not gonna come from this. It’s not gonna make him cry either, though, that’s for damn sure.

When Kavinsky pulls out for real Ronan can feel it. It feels like he’s — well, it’s not like anything other than the one thing that's come out of there before — but it squelches a little. Ronan stays on his hands and knees but looks over his shoulder. K’s pulling off the condom. He knots it and throws it out the open car door, past Ronan’s damp face.

Ronan is stiff. His nose has stopped bleeding, mostly, but when he sits up and twists his sore legs into the footwell, goes vertical, it starts up again. He tries pulling his underwear up. Ronan can see Kavinsky, sitting like this, and notes with satisfaction that he blacked the douchebag’s eye and split his lip.

“You didn’t get me off,” Ronan says as Kavinsky retrieves his snapback off the floor.

“I don’t do reacharounds,” Kavinsky says. "And I didn’t get off either,” with a gesture at his own lap. Ronan doesn’t know if K’s lying. He’s still hard, at least. But then: the pills, maybe.

“The hell do you want me to do about that,” Ronan says. He can hear his voice coming out pliable and mellow, pill-calm.

“You’re a virgin,” K says. “You were, right? I popped your cherry.”

Ronan twitches and halfway through the motion it turns into a cross-body almost-punch. Whatever he took has left him shiftless, though, and the hit came from a shitty angle. No strategy, no finesse. Kavinsky rears back and the punch barely connects. Just a light tap against Kavinsky’s cheekbone, a glancing blow. He doesn’t try to hit him again. That was confession enough. Kavinsky laughs.

“So, yeah,” K says, still grinning. “Too tight, I thought my dick was gonna fall off, and then where’d we be.” And then, as an afterthought: “Matched set, I guess.”

Ronan’s undershirt is twisted, the compression fabric digging in under his armpit. He doesn’t say anything.

“I don’t do reacharounds,” K repeats. “But you could suck me,” and spreads his legs with a leer in Ronan’s direction. K’s pants are still around his thighs, no underwear, his dick still hard and heavy against his thigh. Ronan’s mouth waters.

“That’s fucking disgusting,” Ronan says. “I’m not putting that in my mouth.”

K starts: “It’s not like it hasn’t been anywhere you don’t —” and Ronan smacks him, a good hit across the face. He’s still sluggish but it works for him, a slap with the force of his whole shoulder behind it.

“Boy, you’ve sure got an arm on you, little lady,” Kavinsky says, laughing. “Fine. You wanna do me?” Kavinsky’s smile is mean again. It lights Ronan on fire. “Gotta be for real, though. If I wanted plastic up my ass I’d fuck a chick.”

“I don’t,” Ronan says, tongue stupid and flat in his mouth. He doesn’t know how to finish that sentence.

“So dream yourself a dick for playtime and I’ll let you,” K says, like Ronan is stupid. “How’s that for incentive.”

Ronan doesn’t react. Not because he can tell Kavinsky wants him to. That’s never done any good the times he’s tried it; it’s easier all around not to hide. He doesn’t react because there's nothing there.

“Or you could —”

Ronan doesn’t want to hear whatever nasty ideas K’s got. He climbs into K’s lap even though he doesn’t fit. He’s bent nearly double, feels huge and hulking, the bulk of his body reassuring and safe. Kavinsky smiles up at him, sweet and poisoned. His dick’s still out. He leans up to kiss Ronan, whose vision is blurred and dizzy with pills and exhaustion.

“Touch yourself,” Ronan says.

“Yeah,” Kavinsky says, and sucks the blood off Ronan’s lip. Ronan returns the favor. Then, breathless: “Bet you wanna see how a real man does it, huh?”

Ronan ignores him to fold his hand around Kavinsky’s neck. “Do it,” he says, and starts to squeeze.

&&&

After, he sleeps.

&&&

He wakes up with his hands full of weeds, ripped up by the roots. They’re clumped with dirt, something brown and powdery; when he brushes it off, the roots start to bleed.

“Lame,” Kavinsky says. He’s shirtless in the driver’s seat, doing half a line off his cellphone, holding it in the hand Ronan bit, a jagged red half-moon.

K’s black eye is livid purple by now, his split lip licked neat and scabbed over. His neck’s in shadow, but Ronan can see mottled greens in a finger-shaped chain.

Ronan feels sick, but there’s nothing for him to throw up.

Ronan throws his bundle of leaves and stems out the window. He licks his lips. His nose has stopped bleeding but his upper lip and chin are caked with dried blood, brown and powdery.

There’s a pillbox sitting on the dash. Kavinsky nods at it. “You want?”

Ronan doesn’t answer. He gets out of the Mitsu to go home.

&&&

The last time Ronan’s mouth had touched Gansey’s was two months after the first time, two months after Ronan’s father.

Gansey had pushed him away, and Ronan, whiskey-drunk and stinging with the eternal ache in his ribs and brand-new stinging pain down his back, had staggered hard against one of the half-melted lumps of machinery and slag cluttering Monmouth’s first floor, before they’d cleared it out. Ronan had felt the plastic covering his new tattoo rip against some barbed bandsaw through two layers of fabric. He’s still got a string of raised patches he runs his fingers over in the shower, where that edge dug across the linework.

Ronan couldn’t do anything but wipe his mouth, run a hand over the back of his head where wisps of hair still curled, where he hadn’t been able to reach them with the razor, and go limp against the metal. He had folded his hands into fists, fingers curled around his thumbs and squeezing hard.

“Don’t,” Gansey had said, voice sharp but steady despite the tremble in in his lower lip and the tension in his shoulders.

Ronan had laughed, incredulous, and leaned back in. That time Gansey punched him before he could get the kiss to connect.

He’d taken the hit clumsy across his jaw. His head jerked back so hard he heard something crack in his neck, a twinge of muscle, and he only just managed to avoid biting straight through his tongue. He stumbled a few feet with the force of it: from his back against the hulking machine to his shoulder against the wall. Ronan ground the knob of his shoulder hard against the exposed brickwork.

He left his face turned away and breathed through his mouth. His emotions were too big for his body, and Ronan hadn’t cried since — for years, he hadn’t cried, so instead he wanted to laugh, wild and reckless and raw, because his father was dead and Gansey had just punched him in the face, but instead he choked the laughter back into the knot his throat and breathed around it.

They stood like that until Ronan heard Gansey move his arms, and then Ronan looked at him. Gansey was rubbing his thumb over the knuckles on his right hand, looking pensive. His lips were parted, and Ronan let himself look at them; he knew he wasn’t going to be able to keep doing that anymore, and he wanted to enjoy it while he could.

He cleared his throat and looked away before Gansey could catch him looking, spat a little blood where he’d gotten his tongue after all, and said, “You hit like a fucking girl.”

Gansey looked up, pulling his hands apart and holding them down at his sides with his shoulders squared, the very image of a senator’s son.

“You can’t do that,” Gansey said, and it was a statement of fact, like that sort of thing just wasn’t possible, like it physically couldn’t happen, the same way the sun couldn’t not rise, or like Gansey couldn’t wear his white shorts with the tiny lobsters on them after Labor Day.

Ronan wasn’t an impossibility anymore, just some shithead, so he rasped out, “Someone’s gotta teach you how to defend yourself.”

Gansey wouldn’t be gracious, for once, or let it go. “Ronan,” he had said, “don’t do this to me,” and it wasn’t a plea and Ronan didn’t hear it as a supplication, but he could see that Gansey couldn’t deal with this. He could see Gansey’s edges unspooling, that Gansey was one push away from falling apart.

If Gansey lost his shit the only good things that were still true about Ronan were going to go to waste. So Ronan went upstairs to get a bag of peas out of the bathroom, iced his jaw so the mark wouldn’t purple. When he came back downstairs Gansey was still staring at his sore hand.

“You can’t think about how much it will hurt,” Ronan told Gansey, and showed him how to throw a punch.

He was willing to pretend it never happened; Gansey winced at the sight of him in certain angles for a month and a half, even though the bruise was gone in under a week; Ronan had been so angry that it had been easy to stop being tender with his hands on Gansey, to turn a steadying touch into a light punch, to stop smoothing Gansey’s hair and start jostling Gansey’s skull with his knuckles.

Some part of Ronan was sure the two of them had stopped because Ronan started wearing muscle tanks and shaved his head, and Gansey couldn’t pretend anymore. Some part of Ronan didn’t know if he could forgive him for that.

&&&

Now, it’s 3:58 AM. Ronan doesn't have a home anymore, and he and Gansey are okay. Ronan left Kavinsky strung out in the field. He and Gansey are in a parking lot. The replacement Pig is parked, or possibly stalled. Gansey hasn’t turned it back on to check.

They’re silently passing a jug of orange juice back and forth, taking turns swigging from it. Ronan hands it over to Gansey and wipes his mouth with the back of his hand. Gansey tips the bottle back.

“Hey,” Ronan says. He can still feel nausea churning in his gut.

Gansey looks at him.

“You ever tell Parrish?” Ronan asks, and he can see Gansey’s quizzical-puppy head-tilt out of the corner of his eye. He takes the OJ back.

“About me,” Ronan says, and takes a drink. He can taste Gansey’s spit where their mouths overlapped on the bottle.

“Of course not,” Gansey says, horrified. Ronan grunts. The next time Gansey hands the bottle back to him, Ronan wipes the neck off with the inside of his shirt before drinking.

When they get back to Monmouth, Ronan dreams.

&&&

Ronan wakes up with his father’s last will and testament crumpled in his fists. Article 1 reads as follows:

_I have three living children, named Declan T. Lynch, Ronan N. Lynch, and Matthew A. Lynch. All references in this Will to my “child” or “children” or “issue” include the above child or children, and any child or children hereafter born to or adopted by me._

_All references to “middle son” refer to Ronan N. Lynch._

 

* * *

 

feel shame, real shame, for what my friends must think of me  
dig through the graveyard, rub the bones against my face  
it gets real nice around the graveyard once you've acquired the taste

and when the clouds do clear away,  
get a momentary chance to see  
the thing I've been trying to beat to death:  
the soft creature that I used to be 

**Author's Note:**

> additional / somewhat more detailed warnings: sexualized violence, recreational drug use, & dubious consent. body dysphoria / cissexism around “acceptable” bodies. harassment, misogyny, homophobia/cissexism (incl. slurs), & misgendering intended (and interpreted) as flirting & a form of gender affirmation. ill-advised sex between peers. unsafe and unerotic sex. bad sex, past and present (good sex ruined by dysphoria & bad sex intentionally sought out.) a truly wild misinterpretation of the concept of dignity of risk. weird gay trans catholic dreams with bad imagery.
> 
>  
> 
> on the latin & christian imagery: i have never been catholic! if i got something abt catholic practices wrong lmk. ronan’s dream is a nightmare about the betrayal by judas and subsequent death of christ. kavinsky’s dialogue is a reference to jesus’ last words before death, which were an out-of-context quote from the aramaic version of psalm 22 & translate to ‘o g-d, why have you forsaken me’. the latin ronan quotes is also from psalm 22. the words ronan knows by heart translate to "but i am a worm, and not a man".  
> ronan has probably read julian of norwich, a 14th century mystic & theologian who wrote a lot about the nature of sin & about christ as mother (thus: womb of christ). the blood of the wound of christ is also tangentially a reference to the holy grail, which is, y’know, king arthur sleeping kings questing vibes, not that you can really do much with that in this fandom. [gansey voice] it’s the wrong mythology.
> 
>  
> 
> title from frank ocean’s super rich kids. end tag from the mountain goats’ unicorn tolerance. this fic was difficult; i've been working on it off and on for a year (oof). thank u 2 my enormous team of cheerleaders - umbrella pistolheart burn-it-slow who provided last-minute beta read-through & the many more people i cried on about this fic, truly i wouldn’t have been able to make it through without yall.  
> you can find me on [tumblr](http://gandower.tumblr.com).


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